


Thank You, Gerard Way

by aellae_mcr



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Empath, Empathy, life - Freeform, thank you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 13:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1267597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aellae_mcr/pseuds/aellae_mcr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not a fanfic. This is (a small part of) my life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thank You, Gerard Way

I am an empath.

I feel other people's emotions. Sometimes they're off in the distance, barely noticeable. Sometimes I feel them like my own, strong and heavy in my chest. Sometimes they're stronger than my own, completely consuming every part of me until I become physically sick.

Today, I read the really long tweet Gerard Way made about My Chemical Romance's breakup being about a year ago. In it, he talks a little bit about being an empath. I can't say I didn't have my suspicions (to the point they didn't really qualify suspicions, but an acceptance of a fact) that he is an empath. After all, he's commented about having a strong sense of empathy in interviews several times (Also, I do quite a few weird things and could tell through listening to his music or seeing him in pictures, but that's besides the point.), but, he's never said, at least I haven't heard/read him outright say, that he's an empath before.

When I read the phrase, "as an empath," and went on to read Gerard describe a huge part of having empathy so perfectly (in as few words as he used, too), I was reminded of why I fell in love with My Chemical Romance when I was ten years old (god, it's been seven years that I've loved that band). 

You see, ever since I was a little kid, I've been made fun of because I'm, well...."different." Other kids got creeped out when I mentioned what they thought or felt (and even more creeped out about the things I saw that "weren't there"). I never had many friends because I was just "too weird." I learned to deal with it, but eventually grew tired of always being on the outside. I began to wonder why no one else experienced the thing I did, and so, little ten year old me decided to turn to the one source of approximately all the knowledge in the world, the internet.

The first thing I typed in the google search bar when I opened Internet Explorer (I was ten, okay! I was naïve as to what other browsers were available) is something I will never forget because it was what led me to a better understanding of myself. I typed in, "What does it mean to feel other people's feelings?" (complete with capital letters and proper English because I thought that was how the internet worked) and immediately saw link after link that all sported one word (or root word), "empath."

I began to do research on what empathy was and learned that it was exactly what I was experiencing. I took online tests to see if I was an empath (I'll admit, probably not the best way to tell, but again, I was ten), and every test told me that yes, I was an empath.

The more research I did, the more I understood myself. I could start to somewhat make sense of what was going on around me. I learned how to separate my emotions from others, which is probably what has kept me from going absolutely batshit crazy over the years (seventeen years may not seem like a long time, but it's my life so far, so deal with it). Most importantly though, I understood that I wasn't alone.

Then my dog died. It was days before the school year was supposed to start, and it completely destroyed my insides. My dog was (and at times is) my only friend. Her entire body was covered in cancer (we only new about her skin cancer at the time). She was in surgery to get a tumor removed from her stomach. We found out that she had lung cancer and that her lungs gave out during the surgery.

I stopped functioning. I was so sad and distraught that all I could do was cry for days (okay, months). But it got better when school started a few days later and I met a girl who soon became a friend. I remember feeling her emotions. I remember the sadness and numbness I felt from her. A part of me was attracted to this because my dog died and it was similar to how I felt, but the rest of me just started aching to- to make it whole (due to my dog dying, I had stopped doing research on empathy and began sobbing in my room constantly, so I wasn't able to recognize what this was, which was my empathy screaming at me to make it right). Little did I know, this was my first encounter with depression and the effects being around such an extreme and constant instability can have on an empath (not putting depressed people down, I've gone through it too - beyond the empathy).

The girl I met had cancer (god, cancer is too much of a common thing in my life). She and I bonded over time, and eventually she showed me a song that made her feel better sometimes. That song was "Cancer."

I fell in love with the song - there was just so much emotion in it (little did I know how much raw emotion is in pretty much all of My Chemical Romance's work). I went home, looked up the song, listened to it, then ended up listening to the whole album that it was on ("Welcome to the Black Parade" is by far one of the best concept albums ever in existence, by the way). This not-so-slowly grew into me falling in love with My Chemical Romance and all of the band's members.

The girl and I got closer, but our friendship was quite explosive. Her depression got worse, and one day she told me she was going to kill herself. I freaked out and told the counselor (as any good friend should do if they are told that their friend is going to commit suicide). The girl had to go to therapy after that, and is thankfully alive today. Unfortunately, me telling on her is what ultimately caused me to lose her friendship, but (to anyone who is reading this, pay attention to these next few words) I could easier live having lost a friendship than having lost a friend.

Her depression, however, left its mark on me. I was around her so often, it "rubbed off," and often times I couldn't tell if she was the depressed one or if I was. It also didn't help that I was bullied and had to deal with everyone else's emotions. So I guess you could say her depression somewhat opened the door for mine, but I honestly believe I was heading there anyway. (I hadn't quite yet perfected separating my emotions from other's at the time - I still suck at it, actually. Still useful, though.)

Eventually, I became more and more dependent on music to get me through the day. The more I depended on the music, the more I did research on the band. I began watching interviews with My Chemical Romance. I kept focusing on Gerard (maybe it was just because he was always there as frontman). Something about him always just seemed....familiar. It was one interview that really caught my eye though, and that interview is what made me realize exactly what it was that kept me focused on Gerard. In the interview, he was asked what his weakness was, and he answered that it was his empathy.

I had to pause youtube and sit back for a moment, because among all the drama with my friend trying to kill herself and then hating me because I wouldn't let her and then my own lowering self-esteem/worth, "empathy" was a term I had long forgotten. I had simply gone back to living the way I was before, and that was dealing with it without really knowing what it was.

Again, I began to research empathy, and again began to learn about myself and gained an understanding of the world, only this time I didn't forget the lesson that I learned.

"And through it all, the rise and fall," I made it out of depression because of music, because I had someone to connect to on something I thought I would never have someone to connect with about. Never in a million years would I have imagined that someone besides me or random people on the internet would be an empath, then in came Gerard Way leading the Black Parade. Suddenly, I wasn't alone.

Then My Chemical Romance broke up and my heart shattered and I cried...a lot. (It certainly didn't help that right after I learned that My Chemical Romance broke up I turned on my iPod and played it on shuffle and the very first song that came on - among my four-hundred and something many songs - was "The Kids from Yesterday"). But I made it through it, because I remembered that My Chemical Romance helped me through so much, and they wouldn't want their fans breaking down over the break up. So, I mourned and got over it best I could.

I still remembered that I wasn't alone, because Gerard Way had empathy, and he was still there through tweets and the such. Gerard Way, a man I could connect to because of empathy, the one thing that seemed to pull me away from society.

Then today (or well, yesterday now seeing as to how it is now tomorrow), I read Gerard state, "as an empath," and again, I was reminded that I'm not alone.

So thank you, Gerard Way, for showing me that empathy can make you different, but it won't stop you.


End file.
